


Swells

by heartnervesinew



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Fluffy, M/M, Romance, Sad/Tragic, school au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-10-29
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:13:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartnervesinew/pseuds/heartnervesinew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Swell: noun. A wave, especially when long and unbroken, or a series of such waves. Sort of like a day that feels long and exhausting, a day that feels like it’s got a lifetime crammed into a handful of hours, the minutes that stretch on for what seems like forever, and the days that feel like this when they crash into each other, overrunning one another until the water flattens out, smooth and serene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swells

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! I've had this saved on my computer for a while now, wondering if and when I should ever post it, but then I got my AO3 invitation and Little Things was released literally like an hour or two ago, so I'm just going to go with it.
> 
> Also, if you're looking for a song that might go well with listening to while reading, the first track of Brian Eno's album "Music for Airports" is something you might like. I didn't listen to it while writing this, but I heard it after posting this, and I think it's really beautiful. I dunno, it's up to you.
> 
> I hope you guys like it. I hope it doesn't suck.

I’m the spitting image of my father when he was my age. I didn’t really think much about that before, never really looked at old pictures and put two-and-two together. I dunno, it just never really clicked. It’s a bit creepy, too, because now that’s all I can seem to think about. I’m saying all of this because I’m a bit compelled to believe now that this is how things are supposed to be, that this isn’t just some trick of bad luck, that my lucky stars have been waging this war against me from the very beginning. And you might think that’s supposed to reassure a person, like it might reassure me, but it doesn’t. Most people feel pretty alright because when bad things happen, it’s easier to accept if they couldn’t have done anything about it. I feel a little bit differently because I was never even given the choice. And even if this is how things are supposed to work out, ultimately I never had a single say in dying when I was only twenty-one.

And even after that, people tell you to get over it quickly when you get fucked over somehow, that it won’t do you any good crying over spilt milk, but surely there must be some allowances made, given my current predicament.

Predicament. I’ve got to stop talking like that. Like it’s something that I can change when I so clearly cannot.

Wow.

I’m upset for myself because I’ll never get that full experience. Sure, I know, a lot of people don’t get to, right, but so many more do. They get to live out their 70s, 80s, 90s, however long; they get to see the world change. They get to grow up, see all the different walks of life, and me? Me, at twenty-one? What different walks of life have I been on? I’ve only begun to appreciate where and who I am. It’s like falling asleep after you meet all the characters in a movie, and then you end up missing how it ends. You see what kind of people you’ve got to deal with, but you don’t get the full brunt of their relationship, the rise and fall of action.

I would probably be a real boring film to watch. Nothing good would come out of me. Two hours of watching a kid wasting his life away on being worried over school, and being shy with your friends, and being afraid of the future when the here, when the right now, is happening right before your eyes, and then what happens is you’ve just completely missed it.

I never wanted to be that person.

My father said to me once, right when he left my family, and only a mere few months before he died, that he and I were so alike.

I told him of course that we weren’t, that I would never leave my family when they needed me the most.

And he told me that that was admirable, that that was a good trait for a fine little kid like me to have, that people might look up to me for having that in me. And then he told me that maybe sometime, probably not soon, but eventually, I would figure out what it was like to experience the difference between somebody else’s call of duty and your own. That one day I’d figure out what exactly it would take to make me happy.

And I told him that I was happy, Dad. I am. Why can’t you be?

And he smiled at me, a real, truthful, genuine smile. One like I’d never seen in years. He smiled, and he told me, “I am, Louis. Finally.”

Which, you know, when you’re twelve, do you think that’s the kind of thing that you want to hear? Do you think you want to hear your father say that, now that he’s on the brink of leaving for a new life completely, one that doesn’t involve you or your little sisters or your mother, he is _finally_ happy?

“What did I do?” I asked. I didn’t cry. I was too afraid that he would laugh at me, call me a pussy or a nancy boy. My eyes might have watered a bit, and I remember my face shaking against my will, but he just kept on smiling at me.

“You haven’t done anything, son. You’ve done nothing, and you’re literally the greatest son a man like me could hope for. You haven’t done anything, but one day, you will.”

And I’m just now getting what he meant by that.

Of course, for about ten years, I blamed myself. I didn’t like talking to anybody in my family because I felt like they blamed me for my father leaving us, for _abandoning_ us or whatever, when it has never really been about that. He might have abandoned us, but if you could have blamed him for anything, blame him for not leaving sooner, because he clearly wasn’t happy, and he clearly wasn’t in control of his life, anymore.

What a weird feeling to have.

He died two months later when he was forty-three but feeling less and less like fifty-three as the days went on. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time, on the less fortunate side of a street mugging. He’d moved to the western side of the country, in Liverpool by the Irish Sea. He’d only been there for two months, but I bet they were good.

He told me – literally the last words that he ever said to me – were that one day, I’d do something. That I’d force myself out of complacency and maybe take a fucking risk or something. I’m not in any way supportive of fathers leaving their families – for whatever reason, really – but I’ve _finally_ figured it out that if you aren’t happy, fucking do something about it. Don’t live your life – or whatever – going from day to day wondering where all of the excitement is when you are perfectly capable of creating your own means of getting by. Simply sitting back and hoping for the best – that rarely works out. And you even more rarely have to work for it.

 

&&

 

“Who needs a detailed ‘history of philosophy’?” Harry giggled to himself, and a bit to me as well. “Wittgenstein obviously never knew the joys of skiving off all of your classes, now, did he?”

I grabbed Harry’s wrist, tight within my grasp, my fingertips pulling him over to the jungle gym, leading underneath the chain-link bridge, into the center of that tiny universe. I laid down on my back, mulch brushing up against the back of my head, tickling my neck, and forced the curly-haired motherfucker to lie down with me.

He did so without question.

“We’ll never know what we missed today in classes, I guess,” I told Harry fake-wistfully. “It might have been really interesting.”

“Not as interesting as those clouds,” he shot back immediately. “We can learn about the benefits of redemption another day, but that cloud right there? – would you say that’s an alligator or a tadpole?—if you weren’t here now, you would have missed it.”

“It’s neither,” I said. “It’s a hot air balloon.”

“That’s nonsense,” he told me. “You don’t need a hot air balloon if you want to fly. All you need are some clouds.”

At the time, I found that immensely funny, because in this case the hot air balloon _was_ a cloud. Harry saw things a bit differently, and I liked figuring out how his mind worked. It was fun, a bit like a puzzle.

“What about the alligator? Or tadpole, maybe?”

“They can come, too,” Harry said.

 

&&

 

When I died, my father was the first person that I saw.

“I’d hoped not to see you for a while, I must admit,” he told me.

“You knew you’d see me?” I asked him. He looked at me a bit strangely.

“It’s what happens, I think. You flock to where you want to be. I figured it out after a while, that people come find you when you die. People that cared for you. And I knew I’d find you. You’re too young to be here, though. You haven’t seen enough.”

“You were only forty-three,” I replied, my voice more gravelly, more wet and tired and angry than I’d intended. I really couldn’t believe the nerve of him, like I wanted to be here, that I wanted to be – dead? Was I really dead? All I remembered was driving my car, driving probably to see mum or Harry or—

Harry.

“And you’re only twenty-one,” he said back instantly. “Much too young to have figured it all out.”

“I haven’t figured anything out,” I replied back solemnly. “You said I was so much like you—more than you initially gave me credit for, I bet—that I’d do something one day.”

“You are,” my dad told me. “You are a lot like me.”

“I haven’t done anything, dad. I haven’t done _anything_.” This time, this time when I spoke to my father, dead and defeated, I didn’t worry about crying. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind as I stood there and very obviously wept. And funnily enough, my father hadn’t mentioned anything about it. Didn’t make fun of me for not being strong enough, for not being manly enough, for taking it and letting it get the best of me.

And then he told me a funny thing. He told me, “Yet.”

 

&&

 

“We’ve missed at least one class a day this week,” I said suddenly, the fact hitting me and, instead of upsetting me like I knew even then it probably should have, I laughed. All of a sudden, my situation caught up to me, and all I wanted to do was what I was already doing. I just wanted to roll around in the mulch, just like I’d done for the past four hours, just like I intended to do for the next four until class was dismissed for the day. And even then, I could lie there for longer. I had nowhere else that I wanted to be.

“I know, it’s kind of great, isn’t it?” Harry laughed. “It’s their own fault for not punishing unexcused absences. Not that I’m complaining.”

“I wonder what my mum would say,” I pondered. “She would probably just raise her eyebrows and tell me to go back to class.”

“I get good marks,” Harry replied while he rolled out a lazy yawn. “My mum doesn’t mind so much. She keeps that from my step-dad, but I think he might actually find it pretty funny. Which is actually,” he paused, thinking about it, “probably the reason she hasn’t told him yet. Huh.”

“My dad probably wouldn’t have said anything. I doubt he would have cared,” I muttered, not really wanting to stir up anybody’s sympathy. I think Harry probably knew that – or, at the very least, he knew that indulging that little snap from my past would do nobody any good.

“Even if he didn’t, that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t get a say in any of this,” he said confidently, surely.

“I’m his flesh and blood. He’ll find a way.”

“Not if you don’t let him.”

“I feel like I’m cursed,” I said, my voice dropping in volume very quickly. I don’t know why I brought this up, I hated talking about this, but Harry was always so open and inviting and non-judgmental. Always doing that stupid thing of his where he told you exactly what you needed to hear, but did it in such a way that you also thought it was genuinely what you _wanted_ to hear.

He scoffed at me. “How are you cursed?”

“I’m cursed to marry a nice enough girl and then leave her behind when I grow bored,” I said tiredly. “We’ll probably have kids, and I’ll curse them, too.”

“You’re not marrying Eleanor.”

“I never said that I was.”

“You don’t even really like girls,” he added on quickly. “So obviously if you marry one you’ll probably get pretty bored, but that’s such an _easy_ thing to avoid.”

“I like girls just fine, thanks!” I retorted hotly. “And Eleanor and I would make _beautiful_ kids—“

“That would sound perfect, you know, in theory, if you actually _liked_ females—“

“And who’s saying that I don’t?”

“You are,” Harry said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I just wish that my choices were more my _own_ , I guess. I wish I didn’t have to carry on my family name—“

“You don’t need a wife to do that—“

“Or the bloodline, at least—“

“You’re putting too much responsibility on your shoulders, Louis. No eighteen-year-old boy should have to think about that.”

“I don’t have a choice, Hazza.”

“You always have a choice.”

 

&&

 

I wonder if he can feel me. If he even knows someone else is here, is around him, looking at the same things and hearing the same noises.

His teacher is rambling on about something too widely, too vastly unimportant, and Harry knows it. He isn’t even listening – he isn’t even pretending to listen.

Mrs. Duvak knows that, she’s got to. Harry didn’t come to classes on Monday, and he didn’t come on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he sat at the back of the classroom and weeped into his sweater every class period until the final bell rang, and that just made him weep harder. He didn’t show up on Thursday, and now today, on Friday, he’s drawing out little puzzles in his notebook, his own handcrafted-from-pencil puzzle design that once upon a time he used to cut up, and he isn’t speaking. He isn’t even close to looking up at the faces around him or looking onto the board and learning about – learning about what, World War II?—and undearneath his elbows is a scrounged up composition notebook, with nearly eighty pages filled with puzzles that don’t make sense and will probably never get taken apart and put back together again.

Liam is real nice about the whole thing, really. Nicer than I would probably have ever given him credit for. He doesn’t pry – has never been one for prying – but he slides a note across the empty aisle, disregards Mrs. Duvak who clearly sees it but pretends she doesn’t. Harry pretends to ignore it for all of five seconds, wonders how incredibly obvious he would be if he just put it in the corner and forgot about it, but at the last second he changes his mind, slips his skinny fingers across the fold and opens it, where Liam’s handwriting doesn’t put on a pretense, and doesn’t try and soothe him when probably nothing will do that for a long while.

_Want to skip English?_

And I laugh loudly to myself when I see that, even though the context of that note isn’t even remotely, isn’t even slightly funny, because Liam’s wanting to skip class. Nearly every day of every week, when I was alive (not that long ago, I’m confident – how long, really, is the cusp of one week?), Harry and I would skip one of our classes – a different one every day, mostly – and just sit back in the overgrown forest back behind the school, or if it was our last class of the day, we’d hop into the back of my car and go down the street or into town or just make out in my backseat while Harry’s iPod played through my speakers. It’s funny because sometimes Niall and Zayn would join us for skipping class, but no matter how many times we pushed and pulled and practically begged, Liam never would. He wanted perfect attendance, he would say, wanted to learn, he would say. That’s why it’s March – nearly the end of it, even—and Liam has not been absent for a single one of his classes. Not one.

If that thought goes through Harry’s head, he doesn’t mention it. Just nods.

After class, Harry hurries into the hallway. I can tell by Liam’s face that he’s wondering if Harry is going to run off, leave him behind, turn up this precious opportunity Liam signifies.

Mrs. Duvak doesn’t even attempt to hand Harry the homework. Resolves to email it to him, instead. Wonders if she’ll ever get it back. Doesn’t care.

Liam finds Harry in the playground that was put up for the little siblings of the school’s football players, the one that didn’t get much action other than when bored brothers and sisters filed in while they waited for somebody to walk them home. Harry sat in a swing – typical, really, honestly – and Liam is curious for a few seconds as to what would happen if they were caught out here during class. Would they care that Harry looked almost comatose? Or that his eyes were bloodshot, his face rubbed raw and red? But Liam was a prefect – bless his little soul – and whatever leeway that gave him, clearly now was the time that he was going to take it.

I wonder briefly, for the briefest of seconds, if Harry considers that. If Harry considers the fact that Liam, normally quiet and content (but not complacent by any means – he was about as self-realized, as self-actualized, as they come) was breaking a whole streak of personal records in that moment.

Faintly, the late-bell sounded in the background.

I don’t know what I’m expecting Liam to say as he sits down, as he swings quietly in silence beside Harry’s mostly still form.

I didn’t expect, “You and Louis loved each other like I’ve never seen before.”

Harry’s breath hitched, but he didn’t say anything. Eyes didn’t move. Legs stayed still, his heels dug into the mud, his fingers around the chain siding, knuckles white and pinched.

“Amazing, really, is the only word I could possibly use to describe it. Like a total and complete understanding of how the other one works, and a complete refusal towards anything that threatened to break you apart. That’s so unheard of.”

“Do you have a point, Liam?” Harry asked tiredly. Like he’d already given up on something. Defeated. “Or are you going to continue reminding me?”

I kind of wondered what specifically he was being reminded of. Would have asked if I could.

“What are you thinking of?” I mumbled loosely. I sat down at the top of the slide, looked between Liam and Harry, back and forth, back and forth.

“I keep thinking about how perfect he is – was – for me. Was. And wondering what “getting over it” is supposed to feel like, because eventually people are going to tell me that’s what I’m supposed to do, and I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.”

Liam said immediately, “Probably not.”

Harry flinched. Not expecting that. My eyes bore into the back of Liam’s head, like why would you tell the boy that, he doesn’t need to hear that, wondering what I would have said had he been capable of even hearing me.

“That’s incredibly reassuring,” Harry replied after a few minutes. The whole time Liam’s eyes never tore away from Harry’s downturned face. “But you’re right. I don’t know how I’m going to get over it if all I keep expecting is a text from him saying he’s skipped all his uni classes for the day, why don’t I come outside.”

“All I’m saying is that you don’t have to. Get over it, I mean. Who ever said that was your only option?”

“I think probably the guy that hit him. He probably said that.”

“He didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“What are you going on about, Liam?” Harry asked swiftly, his voice tight and sharp. “Do you have a point?”

“I do,” Liam said calmly. “My point is that no matter what anybody ever tells you, I doubt that this is going to get any easier, because Louis is dead, and you’re going to have to live the rest of your natural-born life not touching him, not looking at him, not speaking to him.”

“Why are you telling me this, Liam?” Harry asked. Heartbroken. Like he had no clue what to do or where to go in that moment.

“I’m telling you this because you guys were so in love, if something so little as him _dying_ is going to keep you apart, then I clearly misinterpreted the extent of your relationship.”

And it’s very quiet, very silent after Liam says that. Even though Harry hasn’t spoken much, even though Harry clearly hasn’t given any long, built-up speeches, his breath is quick, his heartbeat fast, his blood rapidly going from Point A to Point B, keeping Harry’s internal system in order because Harry, at that moment in time, clearly couldn’t have done so well on his own.

And all I wanted to do in that moment in time was to touch him. I could have gone forever without looking at him or speaking to him, but I wanted so badly to wrap my hand around his, loosen up his knuckles from the chain at his side, press my lips to the underside of his neck, right where his pulse point was, and stay there until I felt it come down from its high.

“Excuse me?” Harry asked, his voice real soft, like all of the charge his words could have had were down a level or two, letting him push out those three syllables with just the heart and nerve and sinew of his throat. “We are – we _were_ – forever. We’re no matter what. We’re wherever we go.”

“Think about it, Harry. Just think about it. When he was alive, all you thought was, ‘In an hour, I’ll see Louis.’ ‘After school, I’ll see Louis.’ ‘Tomorrow, I’ll see Louis.’ You kept thinking that, and even though he wasn’t there at that specific moment in time, he was still yours, and you were still his, and at that _specific moment in time_ , I’d be willing to bet almost _anything in the world_ that he was thinking the same thing.”

“Your point?” Harry asked rather dryly.

“My point is that tomorrow, you’ll see Louis. Today is going to last a really long time – it’s going to feel like years. Decades, even. But tomorrow? Tomorrow, you will see Louis.”

 

&&

 

“Louis, we’ve skipped all of our classes, today. Even history, and I _know_ we’ve got a test on Monday.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I thought about that.”

“Do you think we’ll fail?”

I screwed up my lip. Bit it in concentration. “I dunno,” I told Harry. “It’s very possible.”

“For the weekend, since you obviously don’t have any other assessments to worry about, I want to give you some homework.”

“Harry, if you want to copy my study guides, you know that I’ll let you—“

“No, no, not that,” Harry said again. “Something different.”

In the eight-plus hours we’d been stretched out across the ground of this jungle gym in the playground out by the back of the school, we hadn’t moved a muscle further than our backbones adjusting to the flat, but bumpy, mulch-strewn surface. It was quick, Harry bumping my knee with his own in that moment, and it took up maybe all of two seconds, but it made me listen.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked. “I’ll probably do it for you.”

“I want you to do something sometime this weekend, and don’t even really think about it, either, and do it not because you have to, and not because somebody is telling you to, and not because it’s considered _safe_ , but because you just genuinely _want_ to do it. Because you think it’ll make you happy. Because consequences be damned. Can you do that for me?”

I would probably do anything for Harry.

I would then.

And I probably still would now.

“I can try,” I told him.

“If you say you’ll “try”, you’re setting yourself up for a failure that you can just write off as bad luck. No, Louis, I want you to do it. Can you do that for me?”

And I told him the truth. I told him, “Yes.”

Harry nodded then at that moment. I felt his hair flutter against the top of my head, and he knew that I wasn’t lying, and he was perfectly content with my answer.

And the next thing that happened, I wasn’t really tossing it around in my head as much as most people probably would have. I knew that if my plan backfired, I would be so sincerely _fucked_ , but I also knew that, in that moment, I was immensely curious as to what would happen if my plan _didn’t_ backfire.

The final bell of the day rang out loud, signaling that classes were over and that the weekend had begun.

“It’s the weekend,” I said quietly. “I’ve got until Monday morning, have I?”

“You have,” he replied.

So I leaned up on my elbows, completely disregarding what had to be pounds of mulch still attached to the back of my sweater, and I leaned over, and I pressed my lips against Harry’s, and my eyes were closed before I could figure out whether or not he’d put together what I was doing in the millisecond before our faces connected, and the way he tasted made sense, like it really fit how someone like Harry – _my Harry_ – might or should taste, and when I pulled away – and it wasn’t very long before I did, because this was my way of telling him how things stood with me, so that if we weren’t on the same page he didn’t have to wait long before he could run – he leaned up with me, his arms lifting his weight in my direction, quick and immediate.

“Lou,” he breathed out, my eyes opening a fraction of a second before his.

“Can I kiss you again?” I found myself asking.

“Lou,” Harry repeated. “Are you sure that—“

“Don’t think,” I told Harry, quickly cutting him off. “Just say yes.”

 

&&

 

I think, if I had to take a guess, Harry had done a lot of thinking overnight. Overnight since he skipped class with Liam, that is, because he didn’t sleep the whole night, and even when he shirked off his clothes and climbed into bed at sunrise, his eyes were almost permanently open. He only moved when his mum called him down for breakfast.

And I followed him. Like usual.

And after he shoved a slice and a half of toast down his throat, he said to his mother than he wanted to go for a walk, he had his phone, call him if she ever needed anything.

And she smiled. Anne smiled this sad little thing that fortunately was lost on Harry as he sneaked through the front door and disappeared on down the street.

I didn’t really expect him to say anything. He hadn’t said much of anything the whole past week.

We turned past this row of truly awful front garden decorations; on more than one occasion Harry and I just stood on the opposite corner of the street, absorbed his neighbors and their finite taste in landscape decorum, and we would laugh. We would laugh until it hurt to breath, until we couldn’t breathe, until breathing wasn’t even what we cared about anymore because there were more important things at hands to focus on.

Like hideous front gardens.

“Liam pitched a solution to me, Lou,” Harry mumbled to himself. He stopped walking for a second, laughing humorlessly, shaking his head as he picked up speed again. “I’m talking to myself, I’m fucking _talking_ to myself.”

“First sign of going crazy,” I said.

Harry smiled. “I might as well chuck myself into the loony bin.”

And for a moment it was almost too real. It was too much for me to handle, listening to him speak, listening to him try and convey _messages_ to me, even if he had no way of knowing that I actually got them.

Life is so incredibly unfair sometimes. When you think about it, it’s actually kind of amazing that more and more people don’t off themselves from the utter exhaustion you get from putting up with all of the nasty _bitch work_ life exposes you to.

Like now, for instance.

“Whatever. I guess even if they put me there, I won’t be losing very much, now, will I?” Harry voiced suddenly.

“No, Harry, baby, no, don’t talk like that,” I said pressing a palm that he couldn’t feel up against his face.

He shuddered. Blinked minutely.

“Anyway, the idea is that you think of the rest of my life as a really long, really exhausting _day_. Like a solid fifty years, I’m guessing, pressed in-between one sunrise and one sunset. Crazy, huh?”

“A bit,” I agreed.

“It’s just—I don’t know, difficult to think of it like that, thinking of a lifetime as a day without losing my sense of time. Wrapping my mind around you being down the street or something instead of—well, instead of not down the street.” Harry kicked a stray rock from underneath his feet. Watches as it tumbles down the street, curves at a bump, rolls around in the grass for a second before stopping, staying there, resolute. “I’ve never been very good at hiding how I felt about something. Lying doesn’t really come all that naturally. ‘Specially to myself.”

“Not really lying,” I said out loud. “I don’t think that’s the correct term for this sort of thing. I can’t speak of a precedence I’ve heard about, though, if I’m being honest—“

“I’m just terrified, Lou, terrified that I’m going to get too far in and not know how to get back out. See with before, had I ever done something really, incredibly stupid all you would have had to do was pull me back, and that would be it. But it isn’t really like that anymore.”

We turned into an adjacent neighborhood, one with lots of trees that people planted to win awards with. I’ve always really liked this neighborhood; wanted to steal one of the trees just to be funny.

“I’m not good at this kind of stuff, am I?” he asked laughingly. “Wonder if I ever will be. Look, Lou—if you know what I’m saying, you better listen, because I warned you last time, and now you’re playing mind games with me – look. When I said it last time, I meant it, and I still do. If you’re for real, then I’m for real. If you stick around, I’m in this for the long haul.”

Mrs. Canyon’s loud, oversized pit bull barked as Harry passed the house, but he paid it no mind.

“If you ever go away, if I ever feel that you’re just _gone_ , I guess that would mean we were done, wouldn’t it? But if you stick around—then I’ll stick around.” Harry laughed loudly, closing his eyes, tilting his face upwards, smiling just barely. “It’s been a week, you twit. Oh, god, the rest of my life is going to be almost impossible…”

He stopped. His smile grew a bit, tickling finally the corners of his lips, the slightest hint of a dimple showing through.

“We said some of the cheesiest things. God, it’s almost embarrassing.” He pulled his coat on tighter. Shivered though a lack of wind. “But I meant it, Lou. I still mean it. If you’re for real, then I’m for real. And I’m for real.”

 

&&

 

I couldn’t believe it. I actually couldn’t. I was being conned into seeing some Indie film – some French, some spoken-language-something-I-couldn’t-even-understand, Indie film.

I could be sleeping. I could be reading. I could be skyping with my mother while she was pretending to work at the office and giggling as her coworkers passed right by her without saying a word.

But I wasn’t.  I was going to see an Indie film.

And yeah, I feel a bit like an asshole for complaining when I _know_ Harry has been so excited for it to come here. It’s all he’s thought about for months, ever since he first read about it, and I told him ages ago that I would go with him.

But like, if I’m being honest, I never thought he’d actually remember my agreeing to that.

And of course, Harry can’t even drive yet, so I’m going to pick him up only so that he can drag me to a foreign film I have less than negative desire to see.

“It’s a date,” Harry told me multiple times. “A date that just so happens to have Marion Cotillard in attendance.”

And like, what exactly do I say to that?

So I agreed, rather begrudgingly (Harry’s face was practically dominated by the larger-than-life smile that took up his already-perfect face) to go to this _thing_ , this _thing_ that probably didn’t have subtitles or even a decent sound system and probably wreaked of those artsy kids who saw Indie films because they thought it gave them a bit of class. So I agreed, I agreed because I believed that even if the movie sucked (which, let’s be honest, it probably would), Harry would always be right there next to me, and whenever I wanted to, in the darkened room, with who-knows-how-many strangers amongst us in the audience because when did that ever really matter to either one of us, I could twist my face, nuzzle into his, and he’d turn his head to kiss me. And I knew that about half the time the movie played, the half of the movie where I wasn’t nuzzling into him asking for a kiss or twelve, he’d be doing it to me, nudging at my chin with his nose, asking for the exact same thing.

It would have made any foreign film the best movie I’d seen all year. And I knew that.

And that’s what I thought as I drove there, as I drove to Harry’s house, as I drove to pick up the kid I met nine years ago in a playground while my mother registered me for school and his sister attended tennis practice. That’s what I thought when I snapped the seatbelt into place, started the car, and shifted from _park_ to _reverse_. That’s what I thought when I pulled out of my driveway, down the main street through our little town, when I pulled into Harry’s neighborhood, and it is most definitely what I thought of as a car careened around the corner, clearly out of control, and T-boned me into the side of a barely vacant city water maintenance van.

The other driver was fine. His airbag, I believe, bruised his collarbones quite badly, but otherwise all was good. When asked about it on numerous occasions afterward, he would reply that it didn’t make much sense to him; he had perfectly good control of his car before, and then, almost like our vehicles had been magnetized to each other, he didn’t. When asked about it on numerous occasions afterward, the other driver never lied. Not intentionally, at least, but who would ever really know?

I lived for twelve-and-a-half minutes before I died in the driver seat. I was thankfully unconscious, and the last thing I remember thinking had been pleasant.

Twenty minutes after the car accident, and about eight minutes after I’d died, I was officially “late” to pick up Harry. He sent me a text message, which I didn’t reply to. Ten minutes later, and then five after that, he called me, and I didn’t pick up. He was a little bit worried about me at that point, before he then thought that I’d probably either blown the movie off and forgot to tell him, or I’d fallen asleep. Over the course of the next forty minutes, up until the very minute that the movie began to play in the little cinema in town, Harry called and left me four more voicemails, all of which ranged from his various states of exasperation that I wouldn’t “man up and cry for the French” with him, before he gave a large huff of breath, sat his phone down, and angrily began on his (probably late) homework.

Twenty, maybe thirty minutes after that, Gemma, his beautiful, kind, tennis-playing sister who had to drive past my wretched car to get home and, without even really meaning to, figured out that I had died, walked in through the doorway, out of breath from a mixture of very recent tears and at least maybe mild shock. Anne, Harry’s beautiful, kind, very accepting mother asked what was wrong for maybe ten or fifteen minutes before Gemma finally spilled and Harry, who’d been watching and listening, unseen, from the top of the stairwell, sat there for thirty-seven seconds before he stood up and rushed to the toilet down the hall, immediately emptying the contents of his stomach.

Harry’s never vocally mentioned this to anybody, but he blames himself for my death. And if I could, I would tell him over and over again until he _finally_ listened that it wasn’t his fault, because it _wasn’t_ , and I’d tell him that he was so _stupid_ for even thinking so in the first place.

But, of course, I couldn’t.

 

&&

 

“I get it, Harry. I finally get it. What my dad meant. When he said that one day I would do something different. You know, at first – for the absolute _longest_ time – I thought I’d have to do what he did. Marry someone and then have a mid-life crisis or some shit and then leave out on all of the people that cared about me. But you know, he really didn’t mean that. He never meant that, if I had to guess. He wanted me to be able to look at something, consider which option was safer, and then consider which option might make me happier, might make me _live more_ – and then to go with that, with complete and total disregard for how fucked up it might make me.”

Harry slept on, deaf to me, probably completely unaware that I was even in the room, that I was speaking to him, having some big post-mortem epiphany. But I spoke on.

“But, as I told you, I finally figured it out, Harry. It’s all you. It’s kind of all your fault, really, in a way. You weren’t the safe option. By any means. Technically speaking, if we’d never met, I never would have gotten in my car to see that Indie French film – or _La Vie En Rose_ , as it turns out it was, which you _know_ to be my favorite film, and you _never_ told me that’s what we were going to see – I’d probably be alive right now, talking one of my little sisters through this awful thunder storm, or maybe I’d be having great sex in some girl’s bed. But I’m not. I’m dead.”

He shifted in his sleep. His teeth jutted out just barely, enough to brush over his lips, like he was biting his mouth out even when he was unconscious. He had such a strange habit of doing things like that. Biting his lip. I found it quite endearing.

“You were my thunderstorm,” I breathed. “I picked you, because I knew that if I didn’t love you then, one day I would. And I wanted to keep you all to myself, in my little cardboard box that I jokingly called life. But you’re that air that lightning likes to strike through, the rain that puts out the fires at the end, and from the moment that I kissed you, all those years ago, in that stupid playground at the back of the school, I was done with cardboard boxes and waiting out the rage. And I just now figured it out, but you dragged me up on top of a cloud and let me control the lightning with you. You let me help you rain over everybody else for a change. And Harry, I am more grateful than you will ever know.”

Harry didn’t move.

I don’t know, it’s not like I exactly expected him to.

“That’s why I’m going to wait for you, Harry. Because I know you’re worth it. And if you and I aren’t worth fighting for, then nothing else is. And I’m going to stay with you, because I know that you would do the same, and I don’t want to miss a single minute of you living your life in action. And I’m going to watch you grow old, and I’ll laugh when you shout at the teenagers who are rude to you in shops, and I’ll go to every single birthday party you attend and make fun of the people who tried too hard to find the perfect gift, and I’ll cry at every funeral you attend from now until your own, because I’ll know that it sucks having to live your life without one more person by your side, but when you have a go at it of your own, I’m not going to feel bad in the least, because I’ll know you’ll have done your life justice, and when you get over here, I’ll find you, and I’ll pretend that I don’t know the punchline to every single story you tell me, Harry, because I want to hear you tell it, and I’ll never get tired of listening.”

 

&&

 

“Louis, can I—can I ask you a question?” Harry asked me tentatively once. The reason it was so strange to hear him talk like that is because Harry is confident; Harry radiated that suave, smooth sensibility of a person who doesn’t like to waste his time on nerves or tears when words will usually get him what he wants.

However, I did oblige him. “Anything, Harry. Always anything.”

“Last week,” he began, looking at me from across the couch. My couch for once. We usually avoided my house like the bubonic plague, always favoring his house since his house usually lacked quantity. Today, however, was special, and no one else was here. Just us.

Just us. It feels weird to think of it like that, _just us_. We’d been alone before – a nine-year-old friendship, how could we not have been? But a week ago, I kissed him, and in the days following we were always surrounded by either his mother or my mother or his sister or my sisters. And now it was just us.

Pleasant.

“Last week,” Harry continued. “When we were in the playground out at the back of the school?”

“Yes?” I pressed.

“I know I gave you homework. To, you know, do something and not think of the consequences for once. Right?”

“Right,” I confirmed.

“Right. Well. I was just wondering – you’re probably going to think that I’m really stupid, I bet—“

“Hazza, spit it out, please?”

“You didn’t just kiss me because of that, did you?” he asked, his own eyes focused squarely on mine. “Like, you didn’t just do it to get out of that, right? You didn’t—“

“Harry,” I said softly. “You’re crazy. Absolutely insane. Like, probably a lunatic, if we’re getting technical.”

“I am?” he asked, his chest deflating a bit as – and I’m going to jump out on a limb, here – I bet he was looking for a very straightforward, more specific _yes_ or _no_ kind of answer.

So I told him, “Yes. Yes, you are. You are because if you think I’m so easy to write off—“

“I wasn’t writing you off!” he quickly assured me.

“—that I’m going to spend half my childhood pining over you—“

“I’m not accusing you of being a bad friend, you should know, I was just curious—“

“—and then, then, when I finally get my chance, I’d _waste_ it—“

“—you’re not wasting – pining?”

“Yeah, Haz,” I said. “Pining.”

“So it wasn’t just to make yourself… look… cool, right?” he pushed out slowly. Licking his lips. “And you’re—you’re for real?”

“I’m for real, are you for real?”

“I’m for real,” Harry deadpanned. “Yeah. That’s… that’s what I am.”

By that point in time, I’d kissed Harry a grand total of twelve times. The first two were at the playground a week ago. The next four ran the time span of us getting to Louis’s car after the playground, driving to my house, and him dropping me off. And so far, since then, once a day. Once a day because, at that naïve point in our relationship, we worried that we’d grow sick of it quickly, and so we tried to limit ourselves. That was a desperate week for me; I can’t speak for Harry, but I’m fairly positive it was the same for him.

“Well… good, then,” I said, a tone of finality in my voice. “Now that that’s settled.”

And we sat in silence. How long was that for? Ten minutes? Fifteen? An hour? I don’t really know. But what I do know is that at some point I peered up from my history book – we both really failed our last history test, and that was so _monumentally_ embarrassing our teacher took pity upon us and was letting us retake it – to find Harry sat upon his knees and in front of me, these serious, devastating eyes, and a frown, like he was almost afraid of saying whatever it was that he had to say.

“If I sound like an idiot, tell me, okay, but, like—Lou, you’re one of my best friends. You’re probably actually my _best_ friend.”

“The feeling is mutual—“

“You’re my best friend, and then you’re this boy that I like to kiss.”

“And I really like kissing you, too—“

“You’re my best friend, then you’re this boy that I like to kiss, and then you’re the guy that I could see myself being with forever, no matter what, wherever we go.”

“Forever,” I allowed myself to repeat. “No matter what. Wherever we go.”

“Do you get what I’m saying?”

“I get what you’re saying.”

“Good,” Harry told me, his hands moving quickly to take the book from out of my hand, setting it down, careful to keep up the page that I had marked. “Good. Because if I get wrapped up in this, if I get wrapped up in _you_ , and you end up leaving me—Lou, I really, _really_ like you, probably a lot more than you give me credit for, and—no, no, let me finish – and to be honest (and hopefully this doesn’t make you want to run far, far away), that thought really kind of scares me. Because I am usually so, so above getting into relationships that could force my life to go one way or the other. Does that make any sense, Lou? But with you, Lou, with you—“

“With you, it’s always and never anything else.”

Harry fell short, the ghost of whatever he was about to say flighty on his lips.

“Is that what you were going to say?” I asked.

“Something like that,” he said.

“Because that’s what I was going to say.”

He leaned in closer. “With you, Lou, with you it’s always. And it’s always going to be always. And it’s never anything else, and it will be like that for a long time, I bet—“

“It’s forever, no matter what, wherever we go.”

And then Harry smiled. And he kept his hands on my knees, and his eyes were bright, like the kind of green you see at the beginning of spring, but on the trees that, even as winter flurried in from all different directions, refused to back down.

“Forever. No matter what. Wherever we go.”

 

&&

 

Every inch he moved in his sleep I imagined to be for me, even though I know from personal experience that he’s just very fidgety in his sleep. I imagined him to be listening to everything that I was saying, taking it in, knowing that it was the truth spoken from my heart.

And I don’t know, you know what, maybe he did hear me. Maybe something in him that made him mine and me his still listens to everything that I say and stores it somewhere inside of his brain for later, keeping it there for safe-keeping, feeding it to him in small, unobtrusive doses.

I checked his clock in the corner of the room, right next to a mound of clay I’d given him when I was younger. With that mound of clay, I’d tried to make him a football, but I couldn’t get the black parts of the ball perfect, so I’d lumped up the clay and gave it to Harry, telling him that it was whatever he wanted it to be, fully expecting him to throw it away as soon as I left. That was, of course, six years ago, and the shapeless, lumpy, unattractive ball of molding clay sat next to a picture of his mum, almost directly parallel to the alarm clock.

I asked him once why he put his alarm clock on the opposite corner of the room than his bed. He said he had a habit of ignoring things when he didn’t want to deal with them; this way, if he wanted the alarm clock off, he’d have to get up and out of bed first.

Nearly seven in the morning.

“I’ve been here for a while, Hazza, and I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. Think about the other day, will you, whenever you get too tired? Consider how tomorrow morning is already on its way. Haha, isn’t that funny? So take good notes today, because I’m going to ask you every little thing imaginable. You can count on it. Mark my word. Think back, too, to that day when we skipped all of our classes, and then we both failed our history test because of it. I’m going to give you some homework, how does that sound? Nice how the tables are turning, don’t you think? When you get to class today, I want you to pay attention and not put your head down. If anybody offers to skip class with you, do it, but don’t skip alone. It isn’t nearly as fun, I promise. Make a new friend or two or twenty, and throw a party when your mum’s out, and don’t clean it up before you let her admire your work, because I still stand by the notion that if you go into doing something bad already knowing something bad is going to happen, you’re more likely to make that ride taste a little sweeter, won’t you, knowing that something will be lost in the process? And as for me? Well, I’m just in the next room over, same as when we’d text during class and count down together until the final bell rang. I’ll probably be there all day, knowing me and my tedious workload. We’ll catch up tomorrow, won’t we?”

His alarm was set to go off soon; it would probably ring for several minutes before it finally woke Harry up, before he got up and out of bed to turn it off, before he started his morning.

“Don’t think, Harry,” I told him, getting ready to wait. “Just say yes.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you can. :)


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